​Eric Firestone, who owns and operates Eric Firestone Gallery in Hampton, New York (once based in Tucson and, for a short time, Marshall Way in Scottsdale), approached New York arts writer and curator Carlo
McCormick in 2010 with the idea to give contemporary artists a new and industrial canvas. McCormick says he thought Firestone was crazy. And then they took a trip to the bone yard.

A year later,
they're both back at the yard with Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art's Lesley Oliver, guiding three painted planes across Tucson's busy Valencia Street to the museum property.

The Bone Yard Project is the continuation of
"Nose Job," an exhibition curated by McCormick that was housed in Firestone's New York gallery over the summer. The decorated cones and planes are a tribute to the folk art medium developed
in the U.S. and Europe during the First and Second World Wars. They're a modern take on the illustrated pop culture icons, pinups,
slogans, and tattoo art that decorated war machinery and uniform.

photo by Claire Lawton

The shark mouth-inspired nose of a Lockheed VC 140 Jetstar by Andrew Schoultz

​The artwork included in the show, which opens on Saturday, January 28 at Pima Air and Space Museum, includes contemporary interpretations and signatures of this iconography.

For each artist, the exhibition is an opportunity to envision his or her style in a venue that will welcome an audience of contemporary art and aeronautic fiends alike.